A/N: This is based on a dream I had so I apologise if it's a bit weird.. it was really fun to write even though I don't really like the ending.


Lucy walked up to the public noticeboard carrying her sheet of paper. She wasn't nervous, she had to replace the notice every once in a while. She'd been pleased with the response to her advertisements on previous occasions, and she could only hope that the trend would continue, and especially now that she had more experience, her customers would increase too. Besides, she really enjoyed babysitting - she loved children, and getting paid to play with them and take care of them seemed almost amusing. But then, she wasn't complaining. The extra money was good to have. Of course, being in London, she got the occasional prank call or customer who wanted something other than babysitting, but she had to take the good with the bad.


Since putting up the new notice, Lucy had done a few jobs, mostly regulars, but a few new faces. She was in the middle of sitting on her bed watching her favourite internet stars, danisnotonfire and AmazingPhil, when her phone flashed up with a call from an unknown number. It was hardly surprising, it happened often enough.

Quickly pausing the video, she set her laptop to the side and answered the call.

"Hello! Lucy Greening speaking."

"Uh, hi! You're the babysitter?"

The voice on the other end of the line belonged to a man who sounded as if he was somewhere in his twenties. He sounded oddly familiar, but she couldn't place exactly who or what it reminded her of. She quickly dismissed it as nothing, returning her attention to the man.

"Yes, that would be me!"

"Great! So, as you might have guessed, I was wanting a babysitter. Are you free tomorrow night?"

"Yep, sounds perfect!"

It was usually the mother of the children that called up, she mused to herself, she wasn't used to speaking to the fathers on the phone. Not that it was a problem. The man in question seemed to have gone quiet, it sounded like he'd covered the microphone with his finger. She thought she could make out shouting in the background, something to do with giving out their address, but she couldn't be sure. Eventually, he spoke again.

"We'd probably be going out from around 8:30 to 12 or so, does that sound alright? It could potentially go a bit later than that as well, just... depending."

Lucy smiled to herself, she knew exactly what he was talking about. She was no stranger to a giggling couple arriving home by taxi well after the time they'd specified.

"That's no trouble at all! It's a Friday night, so I don't have school the next day anyway."

"Ah, great. So, I guess I should tell you where I live then.."

"It'd probably help."

He repeated his address to her as she wrote it down, seeming almost nervous about giving it out.

"So, how many kids do you have? What are their names?"

"We just have one, it's a girl. She's 5 and her name is Abigail."

Lucy could hear just from the tone of his voice that he'd become less tense as soon as he started to talk about his daughter. It was easy to tell that he really loved her.

"Okay, well, I guess I'll see you then.. oh sorry.. I don't think I caught your name?"

"Oh, right, it's uh, Daniel."

Then there was that pang in the back of her mind that told her she knew this guy from somewhere, but once again she dismissed it as nothing.

She marked the date into her calendar, excited to have another job, even though most of it would probably be after Abigail was asleep. Especially if they decided to stay out past midnight, which she deemed very probable. She was used to it, though, usually she used the time to complete some of her homework or otherwise entertain herself.


It was now Friday afternoon, and Lucy was getting ready for the job that night. She packed a bag with her laptop, phone, purse, earphones, books, homework and miscellaneous charging cords.

At 8:00, her mum drove her to the address, which she'd already been able to figure out was in an apartment block. She walked up to the door and buzzed for Daniel's apartment.

"Hello! Is this Lucy?" The voice from yesterday sounded from the speaker.

"Yes, that's me!"

"Great! I'll let you in."

She entered the building and walked up to the door of the apartment. She tentatively knocked, hearing footsteps already approaching. She uttered a greeting as the door opened, but once she could see the man standing before her, her heart almost stopped and her mouth fell open in shock. So that was where she'd recognised his voice from.

If Lucy was not mistaken, then she was standing face-to-face with none other than her long time idol, Dan Howell of YouTube. Unable to form coherent words, she simply stood and gaped. She could see him noticing her surprised expression and lack of talking, and his expression turned to one of dismay as he put two and two together.

"Shit. Uh, you know who I am, don't you?" He didn't really need to ask the question, the answer was already evident.

Not yet having regained use of her voice box, all that Lucy could do was meekly nod. She wondered what this meant. Dan Howell had a daughter? Did this mean he and Phil were.. like.. parents? Were they actually together?

"Fucking hell, Phil! I told you this was a bad idea!" Dan shouted up the staircase.

If there had been any doubt in Lucy's mind about whether this was in fact danisnotonfire or not, it was soon gone as Phil Lester ran down the stairs, shortly followed by a small girl. She had wavy, copper-brown hair and hazel eyes.

"Phil, she knows exactly who we are - and now she knows a whole lot more too! Why did I let you talk me into this?!"

In contrast to Dan, Phil seemed oddly calm about the situation, which surprised Lucy a little. In fact, this whole debacle surprised Lucy quite a bit more than a little.

"Well, Dan, that would be because we really wanted to go out, which we haven't done in forever. I've been looking forward to it for ages! And you know perfectly well why we can't ask our parents to take care of her."

Lucy could see Dan softening under Phil's gaze, and she watched, still in bewilderment, as the older boy walked up to stand beside him.

"It's just a babysitter. How could we know, Dan? What were the chances?"

"Phil she's a sixteen year old girl. What do you think the chances are?"

Phil just sighed. He turned to Lucy, addressing her for the first time, although it was evident that he was speaking to Dan as well. "Okay, now, we're going to go out. And we'll get back sometime, I don't really know when yet. Please just treat this as a normal job, I can appreciate it might be a bit weird but in reality we're just two parents." He laughed slightly before continuing, speaking in a softer tone this time, and Lucy knew he was being serious because his piercing blue eyes were trained on hers. "I need to ask you to please respect us and our wishes and make sure that this," he took hold of Dan's hand, "this," he pointed at Abigail, "and this," he gestured at the door, implying their address, "do not get out onto tumblr, twitter, internet, anywhere. And we're not your objects of fangirling now, we're just clients."

Lucy swallowed and nodded, still slightly overwhelmed that it was Phil Lester she was currently face to face with. Trying to put that aside and regain her professionalism, she replied with "Yes, all that sounds good. I promise that I'll do that. So, I guess I hope you two have a good night out, I'll see you when I see you. What's Abigail's bedtime?"

"Um.. she doesn't really have a bedtime, but usually we say no later than 12." This time it was Dan who spoke up, the worry seeming to have disappeared from his face. Lucy struggled to hide her smirk; Dan was obviously inexperienced.

The two men left the apartment hand-in-hand, and then the door was shut and Lucy was walking up their living room as if it was any other house. However, she quickly realised that she was going to find this incredibly weird as she sat herself down on the couch she'd seen in countless live shows. She took a few minutes to attempt to regain her composure. She took out her phone to text her mother that she'd got in safely, but she didn't get very far with that before she heard a tinkling voice over her shoulder.

"Lucy, why do you have a picture of Daddy on your phone?"

Lucy couldn't help but laugh, Abigail really was very cute, and guiltily she realised that she'd almost forgotten she was there.

"Uhm.. it's quite a long story, actually. Maybe your daddies will explain it to you once you're a bit older." She laughed again, ruffling the small girl's hair. "Come on, what would you like to do before bed?"

Abigail smiled at the attention and giggled a little. "Let's play a game!"

"Sure! What game did you want to play?"

"Hm... how about Sonic or Mario Kart?"

"Oh! You meant an electronic game.. sure!"

Lucy shook her head as she realised just how weird this was going to be - for a 'regular client', she knew rather a lot about their house and what it contained.

She and Abigail played together for half an hour or so before it was about 9:30. Despite Dan's vague instruction, she decided that it was probably time for Abigail to get to bed. When she mentioned this, however, she got an unhappy response.

"What, already? But it's only 9 in the afternoon! The sun only went down 3 hours ago!"

Lucy puzzled over the girl's anguish, and reminded herself that it was Dan and Phil raising her. After a long struggle, she managed to get Abigail into bed. She sighed to herself and walked back downstairs to the living room.

She suddenly realised how hungry she was, and raided the kitchen cupboards for food, unfortunately only finding a suspiciously large collection of maltesers. Still slightly weirded out at her situation, she grabbed a packet and returned to the couch to eat them. She frowned at the bitter irony of finally being able to meet her idols, but not being able to have a picture taken or a hug.

For lack of anything better to do, she walked upstairs to look at the bedrooms. The strange sense of déjà vu never left her, seeing in real life Dan's fairy lights and butt chair and Phil's green and blue doona cover.

Lucy went back to the grey couch and used the time to do her homework. When she'd finished, she contemplated doing what she normally did and watching some danisnotonfire and AmazingPhil YouTube videos, but she decided that was taking it a step too far.

When Dan and Phil eventually arrived home, well into the hours of the morning, looking suspiciously drunk, she called her mum and asked her to take her home. She bid goodbye to the two men and got into the car to go home, not telling her mother that it was anything different from normal.

It would stay their little secret.